In the beginning, when I took over as bar manager, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. My first couple of seasonal cocktails on the list were…Hmmm…Let me think a moment here…Something called Alpha Carotene. Ha. Fresh carrot juice, cardamom, bourbon, some grated nutmeg over the top. Not a big seller. Also, the carrots were a hassle, the juice turned brown after a day. The bartenders got annoyed at having to prep those daily. There was another called Velvet Elvis, basically a Clover Club with fresh blackberries. No brainer. The bartenders hated me for putting another egg white cocktail on the list. Ugh. Let’s see, there was also a Rock & Rye I think. Funny, I took over in September of 2018, almost five years ago now and I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. We don’t have any of the fancy shit the other bars use. No c-vap distillers, no centrifuge, no pebble ice, no Kold Draft ice, and no top of the line carbonation system. Shit, we don’t even have those sexy glasses the others use. We’ve got the Collins, the rocks, and small and large coupes.

Somewhere along the way, I came up with The Right Decision. A staple that’s remained on the list and probably will until the apocalypse comes. I knew I wanted to pair mezcal and hibiscus. I used to drink a hibiscus tea after dinner with Chef Ali over at the Kebab Cafe in Astoria, Queens and loved how sour it tasted on its own, flavorful without sugar, just a squeeze of lime. It’s a straightforward cocktail. A spicy daiquiri variation. It became the most popular on the menu, mostly because it’s easy and simple. It’s got a tajin rim, yada, yada.

Lately, maybe over the last year or so, the cocktails at Rustic have taken a real weird turn. For the last fourteen months we’ve been using a lot of dairy for body and mouth feel and now that obsession has shifted to incorporating umami into almost everything we put up. Before you rally against me, think of where you first experienced an umami flavored cocktail. Give up? It was probably one of the first you ever had. Yeah, the Bloody Mary. Worcestershire Sauce, tomato, maybe even V8, and celery salt. Big umami bomb that may have been drowned out by too much black pepper and chili spices. Other common ones you may have experienced without being aware? Oh anything with balsamic vinegar or soy and yes, miso ends up in cocktails more often these days to give body and that familiar umami feel.

It’s also a little offputting. A typical drink usually hits the sour and sweet notes, there’s a boozy component and if you’re lucky, you’ll bet some bitterness in there but not too much. Adding anything salty is tricky, that’s why most of the drinks that incorporate it just do it on the rim like a classic margarita. Salt attempts to nullify bitterness, good in cooking bad in bartending, which is why putting a few drops of saline in your Negroni or doing a salt rim on your old fashioned will make it taste funny. Umami is a whole ‘nother universe because it seems to cling and meld to the salt and sour while also upping the sweet at first. So it also tones down bitterness a tad. Putting it in drinks gives a longer lasting, fuller mouthfeel, especially where dairy is involved. But, we can also add that same silkiness without dairy now. Yes, making sour koji amazake and then turning it to syrup is so similar to using whey it should be a crime. Vegans rejoice!

Finding other sources of umami can be a little tricky because they’re tied up in salty, fishy products a lot of the time. I’m speaking of kim chi, soy, and, seafood. The salt helps to preserve and cause the umami flavor via lacto fermentation in many of these instances which is why using koji to ferment is so useful because it circumnavigates having to use salt.

Anyway, that’s where we’ve landed in the last couple of months. Nobody’s Fool, Umami Issues, Hooked on Lee, and the new one, which is a real blaster of a tiki drink–Green Hornet. More and more we’re upping the quality of our cocktails by adding umami but let me tell you, and I’ll use an old mantra here…Simple ain’t easy.